Data visualization for performance insights, better patient service

Taipei Medical University execs analyze, monitor performance across all hospitals in its system with SAS®Visual Analytics

Ray-Jade Chen understands the business of health care in Taiwan. To remain profitable, hospitals must operate with utmost efficiency. At the same time, they must consistently provide high-quality patient care.

Chen is CEO of Center Management and Development at Taipei Medical University (TMU), which uses SAS® Visual Analytics to meet these demands. High-performance data visualization helps TMU executives analyze and monitor performance across all three hospitals in the system.

"The hospital's primary mission is to save and treat patients,” says Chen. “As such, the management team must help the medical team identify ways to deliver quality care with greater efficiency.”

Management can analyze the data on their own to spot new ways to improve business operations. The true value of SAS Visual Analytics shines in the reports, which inform wiser decisions.

Ray-Jade Chen
CEO of Center Management and Development

Three IT systems, one dashboard

SAS provides comprehensive monthly operational performance statistics on sales, finances, quality and equipment performance across each system. The solution analyzes performance at the hospital, department and physician levels. Front-line users like Chen, Chairman Tsu-Der Lee and President Yun Yen can monitor performance for all three hospitals in a single dashboard at any time.

“Management can analyze the data on their own to spot new ways to improve business operations,” Chen says. “The true value of SAS Visual Analytics shines in the reports, which inform wiser decisions.”

Managers can now catch and correct reporting errors earlier than ever. For example, if an item in the billing report had an extra zero, the mistake did not show up until the monthly report came out. Now, color-coded icons make it easy for managers to spot such errors in their daily reports. “Early detection and correction helps prevent incorrect information from affecting strategic plans,” Chen says. “It helps us improve the review process and reduce errors, which lets managers focus on their area of business instead of trying to verify the content of their reports.”

At-a-glance KPI review

Data visualization has allowed TMU to adopt a new performance-based management approach. Managers can assess KPIs across many different areas and compile what they need into a one-page report to inform decisions at a glance. Instead of looking at a meaningless list of income and expenses, they see the factors behind them. For example, the number of attending physicians, outpatient volume and prescriptions written will provide insights about income. They can also assess patient-level data such as revisit rates, revisit frequency and new patients seen.

In addition to the dashboard display, managers can dig deeper and create a bubble chart that shows revenue and expense trends by hospital, department and attending physician. This lets them spot hidden correlations that help them improve efficiency and patient care by knowing how best to allocate resources and budget.

With daily reports, each hospital’s director is like a “front-line commander,” Chen says. At 6:20 each morning, the directors receive "intelligence reports" that summarize the previous day’s performance and give them a clearer picture of overall performance.

"Another benefit is that they reveal previously hidden or hard-to-decipher problems within a set of data,” Chen explains. “This enables an early-warning system to facilitate prompt discussion and improvements as well as adoption of preventive measures."

Challenge

Solution

Benefits

KPI dashboard provides a single view of operations across all three hospitals.

Managers dig into the data on their own to discover correlations between revenue and expenses.

Changes to data show up in minutes, not hours.

Directors can focus on business strategy, not report accuracy.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.